Jerez de la Frontera is famous for horses, wine and flamenco, and that day we missed only the flamenco.

My third day in Real Escuela started with three more lessons. As always with horses, everything is more difficult than it seems. So I’m in the process of a slow transition from being a passenger on a world-class, know-it-all, cruise-control horse to actually riding and improving my skills. Everything which was good (or “Super!” as Joaquín likes to says) yesterday is not good enough today.

Ok, the horse does Spanish walk, but it’s not enough as he doesn’t stretch his legs fully; ok, you are doing tempi changes (that’s cute), but the horse is not entirely collected; your horse should be straight and he is about 5 degrees to the left, and so on and so on. But this is how I like it – Try. Rethink. Repeat. This is how…

Was #myNYPD a mistake? ABSOLUTELY NOT. In fact I love it and I know many others love it as well. I applaud the NYPD for doing this. For reaching out and saying let send us a pic. There is no doubt in my mind that the leadership that put together the idea and launched it across Twitter yesterday had to have known what has happened was a certain possibility. Did they expect 24 hours later it would have become a global hashtag? Probably not.

The NYPD has shown courage in doing this. They are smart and resourceful. They have done something very few agencies do. Actually want to hear from their communities and come hell or high water, they are taking it all in.

I recently had the pleasure of going to Helsinki. Wait. Let me start over. Recently, I was invited to go to Helsinki. Where? Helsinki. As in Finlandia. As in, “I can see Russia from my house.” Or the hotel room in my case.

Here were a few takeaways from my trip I wanted to share with you. Random thoughts and observations from my three days in this beautiful city…